In a symbolic gesture of gratitude to the U.S. Supreme Court for striking down a Texas law that banned gay sex acts, San Francisco gay leaders took down the huge rainbow flag that permanently graces the corner of Market and Castro streets and hoisted the Stars and Stripes.

The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling knocks down Texas' "homosexual conduct" law, which bans oral or anal sex between same-gender partners and was used to arrest a male couple in their home in 1998. Although only 13 states still have sodomy laws, the reason gay leaders say the Supreme Court decision is so important is that those states often used those laws to label gay men and women as criminals and then prevent them from doing things such as adopting children or obtaining jobs and housing.

"Two years ago, we had a case of a lesbian woman in Alabama and the court ruled that because she was in a relationship with a woman, and therefore presumably violating the anti-sodomy law, she was a criminal and unfit to have custody of her children," said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

A few years ago, a Georgia waitress was handed a pink slip that described her transgression as "being gay," said Daniel Zingale, secretary of Gov. Gray Davis' Cabinet and the state's highest ranking gay official.

"Sexual orientation is not yet included in federal employment nondiscrimination law, and now, after this ruling, it can't be far behind," Zingale said.

Thursday's ruling means the remaining sodomy laws in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia are no longer valid, Kendell said. It also means she's going to go back over the cases her organization lost due to sodomy laws and see if they can be overturned.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said the ruling opens the door to legitimizing gay marriage. His concerns echo conservatives who have religious objections to same-sex couplings.

BRAUN	7021	2.21%
DEAN	139360	43.87%
EDWARDS	10146	3.19%
GRAHAM	7113	2.24%
KERRY	49973	15.73%
KUCINICH	76000	23.93%
GEPHARDT	7755	2.44%
LIEBERMAN	6095	1.92%
SHARPTON	1677	0.53%
OTHER	6121	1.93%
UNDECIDED	6378	2.01%
	317647	100.00%

This week, President Bush designated Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari man living in Illinois, as an enemy combatant rather than pursue charges of lying to the FBI and credit card fraud.

The 400 wealthiest taxpayers accounted for more than 1 percent of all the income in the United States in the year 2000, more than double their share just eight years earlier, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service But their tax burden plummeted over the period.

The Muppets have more to offer than lessons on numbers, letters and shapes -- now they're teaching children about fear, violence and war.

The nonprofit group behind "Sesame Street" announced plans Wednesday to distribute 75,000 copies of a video called "You Can Ask!" that encourages children to ask their parents when they are confused about feelings.

The video, paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is aimed at helping children cope with repeated media images of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and other violence in the world.

...

In a segment on fear, a New York City firefighter helps Elmo -- the bright-eyed, high-pitched red Muppet adored by children -- grow comfortable with returning to Hooper's Store after a fire there.

In a segment on loss, an adult helps Big Bird feel better after a stray turtle he had cared for suddenly leaves his nest. Two other scenes deal with bullying and accepting others' differences.

When President Bush took office in January 2001, the White House was told that Predator drones had recently spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times and officials were urged to arm the unmanned planes with missiles to kill the al-Qaida leader. But the administration failed to get drones back into the Afghan skies until after the Sept. 11 attacks later that year, current and former U.S. officials say.

The Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay sex today, ruling that the law was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

The 6-3 ruling reverses course from a ruling 17 years ago that states could punish homosexuals for what such laws historically called deviant sex.

The court also dismissed a case against sneaker giant Nike Inc. and whether free speech protections extend to corporate advertising. The court said it never should have taken on the dispute.

The action is not a ruling on the merits of Nike's claims, but it apparently means a California antiglobalization activist can continue a lawsuit against the company. Nike had argued that private individuals cannot use the courts to police what companies say about themselves.

Much of Baghdad has gone without water or electricity in recent days, adding to the hardship of people coping with severe unemployment and a lack of public safety.

''The problem is due to sabotage of the main power line between Beiji and Baghdad,'' Paul Bremer, leader of the provisional authority in Iraq, told a news conference.

We are now little more than six months away from the primaries. The real campaign will probably begin on Labor Day, but the Democratic field seems to have organized itself into three tiers. The bottom tier is the vanity candidacies: Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun. The middle tier is serious candidates who have yet to catch fire: Joe Lieberman (despite high name recognition in the polls), John Edwards (despite financial support from his fellow trial lawyers and some creative speeches about specific issues) and Bob Graham. At the top are John Kerry, the party establishment's favorite; Dick Gephardt, the Midwest labor candidate. And Howard Dean.

MONTPELIER, Vt. - Ben & Jerry's will be selling a special sundae on Monday to honor former Gov. Howard Dean's formal kickoff of his presidential campaign.

The "Maple Powered Howard" Sundae will be sold in Ben & Jerry's six company-owned stores only on Monday to coincide with Dean's announcement in downtown Burlington, said spokesman Lee Holden.

The concoction will consist of vanilla ice cream topped with hot maple syrup, maple-flavored whipped cream and walnuts. It will sell for $3.

"It's being done in support of one of our neighbors and (on) that one day only," Holden said.

The sundae will be sold at Ben & Jerry's stores in Montpelier, Waterbury, Middlebury, Shelburne, Williston and in downtown Burlington, just a block from where the former governor will be kicking off his campaign.

Nobody is paying any attention to the budget deficit. Last month the House Budget Committee's Democrats forecast a deficit of nearly $500 billion, and The Post reported the story on Page A4. Last week the Congressional Budget Office reported that the deficit would balloon to a record $400 billion-plus, and The Post again buried the story on A4. Spending trust funds, such as Social Security, is what keeps the estimate at $400 billion. The actual deficit will be approximately $600 billion.

Two radio show hosts who duped Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez into believing he was speaking by phone with Cuban President Fidel Castro now claim to have similarly tricked Castro.

Here on the shores of Lake Como, Mario Cuomo is attending an international conference. I sought out Cuomo because of something that just happened back in his home state. Three men were freed on bond after serving 18 years in jail for a rape and murder they probably did not commit. Cuomo long opposed the death penalty. The New York case is an example of why.

Look out, Rupert, here comes … Al?

Since deciding not to make another race for the White House in 2004, former Vice President Al Gore has been devoting considerable time to another dream, one he shares with many Democrats these days — creating a media enterprise that could challenge the dominance of conservative voices in cable television and talk radio.

English soccer star David Beckham reportedly has agreed to a four-year contract with Real Madrid.

Spanish radio network Cadena Ser reported Tuesday that the England captain and midfielder for Manchester United will get a $29 million deal. Beckham will be at a news conference in Madrid on July 2, Cadena Ser said.

The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive ... The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside No. 4.

I came to Iraq to see if I could help the coalition forces find those pesky weapons of mass destruction. It would make a great column if I could bring back my own nuke.

It is true that if the 2002 mid-term elections were held again tomorrow the result would likely be the same. But it is also true that Democrats have made two immensely important realizations since November: they have a big problem; and the problem is that they don't have a clear message. As Adam Clymer recently noted in his broad analysis of the party in The New York Times, "If there is one thing all kinds of Democrats agree on, it is that they need a better message."

It isn't as bad as it sounds. An important point seems to have gotten lost, especially in the context of petty squabbling among the party wings. A message problem doesn't mean you don't stand for anything. It means you don't know how to say what you stand for. The difference is huge. In terms of a comeback, it is the difference between months and years. There are, in fact, big, fundamental, unshakable ideals in which all Democrats, from John Breaux to Al Sharpton -- and no Republicans -- believe. It's just that they are unprocessed and conceptually unconnected to policy ideas.

A closer look at four of these universal Democratic values reveals the power waiting to be unleashed by effective messaging. They are mainstream American values, as old as the republic. If Democrats can argue on these terms they will win a lot more arguments.

To political reporters, the Meetup phenomenon seems brand-new. And to the extent that the Internet is involved, it is. But if you've ever spent any time in the political precincts of the left -- where issue-advocacy, community-service and identity-based groups have flourished while support for the Democratic Party has withered -- you can see that the Meetup phenomenon is in fact drawing on and replicating the social dynamics of nonprofit and movement-based organizations that have, over the past three decades, become the dominant means of civic participation by people on the left.

To the extent that any presidential candidate will be able to tap into the power of the Internet, I will hazard a prediction: None will be able to mobilize the kind of support that Dean has generated (and will continue to generate over the coming six months). The Internet, as a technology, is perfectly suited to the people who make up the "Democratic wing" of the Democratic Party and its Green and independent sympathizers. While such businesses as Amazon.com and eBay may have made Americans more comfortable with online donations and helped Dean become the first presidential candidate ever to raise more than $1 million online, in the end it is the group MoveOn.org that more accurately gives a picture of the energy fueling Dean's online rise. Founded in 1998 via an e-mail sent to about 300 people by screen-saver millionaire Wes Boyd, the group today has 1.4 million people registered. Last fall and winter, it mobilized millions of people in thousands of anti-Iraq War protests throughout the world; it also sparked a massive online letter-writing campaign to Congress.

Such is the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, compounded by the return to the country of a large number of former Afghan communist refugees, that United States and Pakistani intelligence officials have met with Taliban leaders in an effort to devise a political solution to prevent the country from being further ripped apart.

An Iraqi shepherd is seeking 200 million dollars in damages from the US military for the deaths of 17 members of his family as well as 200 sheep in a missile strike, in the first such suit filed through the courts of the US-led occupation administration.

His fledgling Mideast peacemaking effort in jeopardy, only days after it seemed to hold much promise, Bush said the helicopter attack that wounded Abdel Aziz Rantisi and killed a bodyguard and a bystander was troubling and counterproductive. "I emphasize all parties must behave responsibly," he said.

The United States has its own recent record of trying to kill terrorists wherever they can be found, of wanting Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" or with his "head on a platter," and of making Saddam Hussein a personal target at each opportunity during the Iraq war.
...
Despite Washington's nearly 30-year-old ban on assassinations, the government has vigorously hunted people it regards as terrorists and has tried to kill them. Vice President Dick Cheney said he'd accept bin Laden's head; Bush wanted the al-Qaida leader in any fashion.

In November, an unmanned CIA Predator plane fired a missile at a car in Yemen, killing a man described as al-Qaida's top operative in that country and five other people. Yemen's leadership was cooperating in the war on terrorism.
...
Lasensky said that although the leaders may view terrorism in the same stark terms, the situations are different. The Israeli-Palestinian struggle is a longstanding one between two peoples over nationhood and territory, he said. "That is not 9-11.”

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (AP) -- American politics changed 40 years ago this week at a schoolhouse door.

Five months after vowing "segregation forever" at his 1963 inaugural, Gov. George C. Wallace tried to block the admission of two black students to the all-white University of Alabama.

Wallace's defiant "stand in the schoolhouse door," failed to keep out minorities -- with about 19,600 students, Alabama's student body is now 13 percent black. But it launched Wallace onto the national political scene and moved the Democratic Party firmly into the corner of civil rights.

"What happened that day did represent a tectonic shift in American politics," said Culpepper Clark, Alabama's communications dean and the author of a book on the showdown.

This week, the university will hold a three-day observance for the anniversary of Wallace's infamous stand. Honorees include the two black students who faced the governor that day -- Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood.

Wanna know what conservatives really hate?

What makes everyone from harmless GOP dittoheads to ultra-right-wing nutjobs full of rage and hiss and homophobia and blind jingoism roll their eyes and throw up their hands and scamper for their Bibles for reassurance that life is still repressed and we're still going to war and Dubya is still smackin' 'round the envurment along with them wimmin and homosekshuls and furriners?

Why, hippie crap, of course. New-age babble about love and peace and godless pagan prayer, organic foods and sustainable trees and chakras, divinity and luscious goddesses and soul paths and upping your personal vibration to counter all the venomous hatred slinging about the culture like some sort of conservative, fearmongering weapon of mass depression. Man, they just hate that.

Somewhere, USA: I saw a poll on TV last night that shows Hillary's favorables at 44%, unfavorables at 46. How do you think that bodes for her in '08?

Sidney Blumenthal: I would say first of all that I would hope that Hillary would endorse the incumbent Democratic president in the election in 2008. Nonetheless, it's clear from that poll that Hillary, like former president Clinton, creates divergent polls in politics. The country remains sharply divided since the 2000 election which Al Gore, after all, won in the popular vote. When Bill Clinton was elected, he was regarded by some Republicans as illegitimate and the efforts to overthrow him finally culminated in an unconstitutional impeachment trial in which he was finally acquitted. He was a threat to the power of the Republican Party and a host of special interests from the tobacco companies, the health insurance industry to the gun manufacturers. His conciliatory manner and moderation and ability to create a new political center only made him that much more threatening.

Hillary is an extension of all that and she draws and creates around her a similar magnetic field. It seems as though it may be about the Clintons personally and there's no doubt that charisma plays a role here but there are deeper issues that involve the American people that are subject to conflict that underlie the divided opinion that remains at the heart of American politics.

Congress' top budget analyst warned Tuesday that the government is on track this year for a record deficit exceeding $400 billion, which provides fresh fodder for President Bush (news - web sites) and Democrats to use in their battle over taxes and spending.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites) had estimated last month that the 2003 shortfall would surpass $300 billion. But that was before lawmakers approved fresh tax cuts for families and investors plus aid for cash-strapped states, projected to cost $61 billion this year alone. It also did not fully reflect the economy's malaise, which has constricted revenue.

The deepest shortfall ever, $290 billion, occurred in 1992. This year's deficit will be the second straight, a jarring turnabout from the four consecutive annual surpluses that marked the last years of the Clinton administration.

1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT

A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian from his 31st floor office at the UN in New York, Mr Blix said: "I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media. Not that I cared very much.

"It was like a mosquito bite in the evening that is there in the morning, an irritant."

Bob Graham's presidential tour now comes with a CD.

The Bob Graham Charisma Tour 2004, dedicated to promoting the upstart White House bid of Florida's senior U.S. senator and occasional amateur a cappella performer, is due out within days.

Those who might question the title -- Graham, known for his earnest delivery, is not one to throw rhetorical red meat to the crowds -- can ponder their nay-saying to the tune of We've Got a Friend in Bob Graham, or tap their toes to the Latin-beat, Spanish version, Arriba Bob!

The House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, rejected a demand from the administration that the House pass the Senate bill, which would provide an increased child tax credit to 6.5 million low-income families.

"Ain't going to happen," Mr. DeLay said this afternoon, reiterating his stance that the credits would be approved only as part of a much larger tax-cut bill, an $82 billion package that House Republicans unveiled later in the day and plan to bring to the floor on Thursday.

"Democracy is not a lie" – I first learned that from Henry Demarest Lloyd, the progressive journalist whose book, "Wealth against Commonwealth," laid open the Standard trust a century ago. Lloyd came to the conclusion to "Regenerate the individual is a half truth. The reorganization of the society which he makes and which makes him is the other part. The love of liberty became liberty in America by clothing itself in the complicated group of strengths known as the government of the United States." And it was then he said: "Democracy is not a lie. There live(s) in the body of the commonality unexhausted virtue and the ever-refreshed strength which can rise equal to any problems of progress. In the hope of tapping some reserve of their power of self-help," he said, "this story is told to the people."

This is your story – the progressive story of America.

Pass it on.

TORONTO/OTTAWA (Reuters) - The city of Toronto started issuing marriage licenses to gay couples on Tuesday after an Ontario provincial court issued a landmark ruling setting aside the heterosexual definition of marriage.

If the ruling is not appealed, the province of Ontario would be the first jurisdiction in North America to legalize gay marriage. Vermont and Quebec have allowed gay civil unions but not full marriage.

Already a marriage ceremony between two men who had helped bring the case was set for Tuesday afternoon in Toronto, Canada's largest city.

Retroactively, the court decision also recognized two religious gay marriage ceremonies that took place in Toronto in 2001, ordering the province to register those marriages.

Dark Helmet: I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.
Lone Starr: What's that make us?
Dark Helmet: Absolutely nothing! Which is what you are about to become.
- Spaceballs

A group of scientists believe that she is one of three mummies discovered in a secret chamber of a tomb known as KV35 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in Luxor.

Mokhiber: The tax bill cut the President's own personal income tax by $26,000. I'm wondering, what is he planning to do with the extra cash?

Ari Fleischer: I haven't asked him.

Mokhiber: You said in April that the war was about weapons of mass destruction. The war resulted in thousands of innocent civilian deaths, according to the Los Angeles Times. Do you personally feel any remorse given the public case that is being made that this war was based on that false pretext?

Ari Fleischer: Number one, you have no basis to say that it is a false pretext. Number two, when you take a look at the mass graves that have been discovered all around Iraq, I think that world breathes a sign of relief that the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, with no regard to human rights, was removed from power so that the Iraqi people can at long last have a life to build a future that is based on freedom and opportunity and not on tyranny.

Mokhiber: But you said the war was based on weapons of mass destruction.

Ari Fleischer: That still stands, per earlier in the conversation.

"Kerry holds his lead but the real story here is Dean's rise. At the same time, Dean has a burden: how to knock down the very popular Kerry, whose favorability rating and ratio are solid. Dean, who is still not known among 36% of the voters, runs the risk of hurting himself with a negative campaign. The other key story here is the battle for third place - right now Lieberman and Gephardt. A Gephardt victory in Iowa could boost him to the third place he will need in New Hampshire. Essentially that could thrust him into a two-way race with the winner. Lieberman must win somewhere and right now he is not cutting it in either Iowa or New Hampshire. Next to Lieberman's anemic showing in this New England state, the worst news is for Graham whose 23%-23% favorable-unfavorable rating suggests a real problem holding on until Super Tuesday (February 3, 2004). Edwards has a good ratio but is still not catching on."

In its relentless drive to overthrow the moral code that has guided Western civilization since Constantine, the homosexual lobby has moved from triumph to triumph in a few years. And what would constitute total victory for "gay values" over traditional values?

Answer: Acceptance by a majority of Americans of the idea that homosexual relations are as natural, normal and moral as those between a man and his wife, and the extension of the full rights of married couples to homosexual unions.

If the tenets of the gay rights movement are true, the Torah and New Testament are wrong, Christianity has been wrong since the time of St. Paul, Aquinas and Augustine were wrong, and the moral edifice by which men in the West have lived for 2,000 years was built on bigotry, prejudice and lies. Was it?

The festival, Austin's eighth annual celebration of gay pride, offered live music, arts and crafts, food, beer and tattoos. About 4,000 people attended the daylong event at Fiesta Gardens on the shore of Town Lake.

...

The festival was also a forum to talk presidential politics. Signs that read "Howard Dean for America" were posted throughout the grounds.

Volunteers promoted Dean, a Democratic presidential candidate and former Vermont governor who in 2000 signed that state's landmark civil union bill into law, the country's first law giving equal rights to gays and lesbians. At least 300 people pledged support for Dean, who needs 5,000 signatures to qualify as a presidential candidate in Texas, said Glen Maxey, a former Texas representative who supports Dean.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites), whose White House memoir is published this week, on Sunday ruled out making her own presidential bid in 2008.

Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

This administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, which was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It was done with fine style and secrecy in order to avoid the craziness and drunken violence that local lawmen feared would inevitably have followed the ceremony. I know nothing about planning even the simplest wedding, nothing at all, and neither does sweet Anita, who is now my Wife. So we did it the Bhuddist way. We drove straight to the County Courthouse on a stormy Thursday morning and were happily married by noon. Sheriff Bob performed the ceremony, his wife took pictures, and a black priest from Sicily handled the video camera. It was fun.

Our honeymoon was even simpler. We drank heavily for a few hours with Chris Goldstein and accepted fine gifts from strangers, then we drove erratically back out to the Owl Farm and prepared for our own, very private celebration by building a huge fire, icing down a magnum of Crystal Champagne and turning on the Lakers-Timberwolves game until we passed out and crawled to the bedroom. Amor Vincit Omnia.

Chomsky: The film opens with Galadriel speaking. "The world has changed," she tells us, "I can feel it in the water." She's actually stealing a line from the non-human Treebeard. He says this to Merry and Pippin in The Two Towers, the novel. Already we can see who is going to be privileged by this narrative and who is not.

Zinn: Of course. "The world has changed." I would argue that the main thing one learns when one watches this film is that the world hasn't changed. Not at all.

Chomsky: We should examine carefully what's being established here in the prologue. For one, the point is clearly made that the "master ring," the so-called "one ring to rule them all," is actually a rather elaborate justification for preemptive war on Mordor.

Zinn: I think that's correct. Tolkien makes no attempt to hide the fact that rings are wielded by every other ethnic enclave in Middle Earth. The Dwarves have seven rings, the Elves have three. The race of Man has nine rings, for God's sake. There are at least 19 rings floating around out there in Middle Earth, and yet Sauron's ring is supposedly so terrible that no one can be allowed to wield it. Why?

Chomsky: Notice too that the "war" being waged here is, evidently, in the land of Mordor itself — at the very base of Mount Doom. These terrible armies of Sauron, these dreadful demonized Orcs, have not proved very successful at conquering the neighboring realms — if that is even what Sauron was seeking to do. It seems fairly far-fetched.

Because open society is an abstract idea, I shall proceed from the abstract and general to the concrete and particular. The concept of "open society" was developed by philosopher Karl R. Popper, whose book Open Society and Its Enemies argued that totalitarian ideologies -- such as communism and fascism -- posed a threat to an open society because they claimed to have found the final solution. The ultimate truth is beyond human reach. Those who say they are in possession of it are making a false claim, and they can enforce it only by coercion and repression. So Popper derived the principles of freedom and democracy -- the same principles that President Bush championed in his February speech on Iraq -- from the recognition that we may be wrong.

"Remember also when women started canvassing and picketing to get the right to vote in the women’s suffrage movement. Remember how many of those were arrested and kicked and dragged off to jail. For what? For wanting to have the right to vote. It wasn’t just men. Some men who were opposed to this. It was the liquor industry, and it was the industrial corporations who didn’t like women at that time organizing to end the brutalized child labor in those dungeon factories because the women believe those children belonged in school."

- Ralph Nader, stump speech in 2000

Lincoln was furious. "Almost 60 percent of the families in my state make under $26,000," she told me. "People say these families don't pay income tax. But they pay a lot of other taxes -- Social Security, sales tax, excise taxes. And those taxes just keep going up. And they buy the same things for their kids -- soap powder, blue jeans -- as I buy for the twins. And pay the same prices."

So she mobilized. With Snowe again her partner, she quickly rounded up more than half the Senate as co-sponsors of a bill to restore the full $1,000 refundability, paying the $3.5 billion cost by closing several Enron-style corporate loopholes.

...

In a rare victory for children and common sense, a bipartisan agreement was reached late yesterday to do what was right. Maybe the women should speak up more often.

On March 17, in his final speech to the American people before ordering the invasion of Iraq, President Bush took one last opportunity to bolster his case for war. The centerpiece of his argument was the same message he brought to the United Nations months before, and the same message he hammered home at every opportunity in the intervening months, namely that Saddam Hussein had failed to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and thus presented an imminent danger to the American people. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised," the President said.

Now, nearly two months after the fall of Baghdad, the United States has yet to find any physical evidence of those lethal weapons. Could they be buried underground or are they somehow camouflaged in plain sight? Were they destroyed before the war? Have they been shipped out of the country? Do they actually exist? The questions are mounting. What started weeks ago as a restless murmur throughout Iraq has intensified into a worldwide cacophony of confusion.

The fundamental question that is nagging at many is this: How reliable were the claims of this President and key members of his Administration that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed a clear and imminent threat to the United States, such a grave threat that immediate war was the only recourse?

As a presidential candidate, he made waves, he made mistakes and he made important enemies. He would regularly scold his audiences for their selfishness. Not content simply to comfort the afflicted, always his most loyal constituency, he deliberately chose to afflict the comfortable, as well.

And after he won the critical California presidential primary on June 4,1968, Sen. Robert Francis Kennedy, D-New York,age 42, was assassinated in Los Angeles.

In those 35 years, much too much has changed in our nation and in our world. But the legacy of Robert Kennedy is timeless. He was the rare candidate with the guts to tell his listeners not just what he clearly believed, but also what his listeners clearly did not want to hear, and still win -- over strenuous White House opposition -- five of the six primaries he had time to enter in his 85-day campaign.

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STEWART, MARTHA WESTPORT, CT 06880	PUBLISHER	3/30/1996	$500	Kerry, John
STEWART, MARTHA WESTPORT, CT 06880	MARTHA STEWART LIVING	3/22/1996	$1,000	Clinton, Bill
STEWART, MARTHA MS WESTPORT, CT 06880	MARTHA STEWART LIVING	11/15/1995	$1,000	Women's Campaign Fund
STEWART, MARTHA WESTPORT, CT 06880	MARTHA STEWART LIVING	10/27/1995	$1,000	Clinton, Bill
STEWART, MARTHA WESTPORT, CT 06880	WRITER & EDITOR	9/21/1993	$250	Voters for Choice/Frnds of Fam Planning
STEWART, MARTHA WESTPORT, CT 06880	AUTHOR & EDITOR	10/12/1992	$3,000	Democratic National Cmte
STEWART, MARTHA S WASHINGTON, DC 20007		5/7/1992	$1,000	Handgun Control Inc
STEWART, MARTHA WESTPORT, CT 06880	MARTHA STEWART LIVING MAGAZINE	2/20/1992	$500	Mrazek, Robert J
STEWART, MARTHA WESTPORT, CT 06880	AUTHOR/CONSULTANT	2/13/1992	$1,000	Clinton, Bill
STEWART, MARTHA WESTPORT, CT 06880	MARTHA STEWART INC	11/5/1991	$500	Moynihan, Daniel Patrick
STEWART, MARTHA WESTPORT, CT 06880	WRITER	10/1/1990	$241	Bradley, Bill

2002 cycle data downloaded from FEC on April 28, 2003. Date of request: June 5, 2003

Oh well, I've got better things to do than worry about some rich gal. But apparently these people don't:



posted by Matthew Carroll-Schmidt at 11:46 AM
(0) comments

Federal Election Commission officials said that while they couldn't make a formal ruling unless they get a request, their initial reading of the law was that Kerry couldn't use his wife's assets for his presidential race. They noted, however, that they examine all details in a particular case before reaching a formal conclusion.

Under the federal rules, a spouse is limited to the same $2,000 individual donation limit as other campaign contributors. Heinz Kerry cannot transfer money or other assets to Kerry for the purpose of influencing a federal election. For example, if Kerry were to use gifts from her to help finance his race, he would have to show they were part of a pattern of giving that predated his candidacy.

SATAN, n.

One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he.
"Name it."

"Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws."

"What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul -- you ask for the right to make his laws?"

"Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself."

It was so ordered.

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd resigned on Thursday in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.

"This is a day that breaks my heart," Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger told staffers at a morning newsroom meeting.

The Times announced that Joseph Lelyveld, the paper's former executive editor, has been named interim executive editor, assuming the responsibilities held by Raines.

"I said you were a man of peace. I want you to know I took immense crap for that."
- Dubya to Ariel "War Criminal" Sharon

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.
The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."

Oh, don't hang up, I've got to put you through the security X ray.

(Conveyor belt noises.)

How was it? You feeling okay?

What kind of car do you drive?

Well, I drive an SUV. Naughty, naughty. But I have two children who play hockey and soccer and there was no way I could do without a seven- or eight-passenger car.

Good thing Ford is coming out with the Escape.

Yeah, our next car will be an SUV, but it will be a hybrid.

"I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, 'What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?' I was furious and getting more so by the second. He just stood there saying over and over again, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea.'"

''The most difficult decisions I have made in my life were to stay married to Bill and to run for the Senate from New York,'' she writes.

King, from Mars writes:
Greetings Mr. Secretary

Although there are no humans on Mars at present, Iwould like to invite the human race to consider Mars as an ideal location fora vacation home or just a place to get away from it all.

Would you consider offering incentives to those who might want to build ahome on Mars? I'll tell you, it is a beautiful place and oh, let me tell you,there is nothing like Autumn on Mars.

And please don't tell me that you are looking at Venus first.

Kindly

King Bloop Zod
Mars

Mel Martinez
Dear King,

Your problem is one that does not appear to be housing. I think you are doing great at promoting tourism but affordable housing in America is more of my concern. Good luck in your endeavors.

His latest post mentioned an afternoon he spent at the Hamra Hotel pool, reading a borrowed copy of The New Yorker. I laughed out loud. He then mentioned an escapade in which he helped deliver 24 pizzas to American soldiers. I howled. Salam Pax, the most famous and most mysterious blogger in the world, was my interpreter. The New Yorker he had been reading—mine. Poolside at the Hamra—with me. The 24 pizzas—we had taken them to a unit of 82nd Airborne soldiers I was writing about.

While I commend Mr. Krugman, he understates the damage the Bush plan will cause when he writes that either taxes will go up again or vital programs will be gutted. In fact, both will occur. States and cities have already raised property, sales and excise taxes to try to meet the responsibilities the Bush administration is shirking. These taxes hit middle-income families first.

Samuel Armas, a chattering, brown-eyed 3½-year-old, has no idea what “fetus” means. Nor does he realize that he was one of the most celebrated in medical history.

AT A MERE 21 weeks of gestational age—long before it was time to leave his mother’s womb—Samuel underwent a bold and experimental surgical procedure to close a hole at the bottom of his spinal cord, the telltale characteristic of myelomeningocele, or spina bifida. Samuel’s parents, Julie and Alex, could have terminated Julie’s pregnancy at 15 weeks when they learned about their son’s condition, which can result in lifelong physical and mental disabilities. But the Armases do not believe in abortion. Instead, in August 1999, they drove 250 miles from their home in Villa Rica, Ga., to Nashville, Tenn., where Dr. Joseph Bruner, of Vanderbilt University, performed a surgery bordering on the fantastical. Bruner cut into Julie’s abdomen, lifted her balloonlike uterus out of her body, made an incision in the taut muscle, removed the fetus, sewed up the spinal defect and tucked him back inside. Fifteen weeks later Samuel Armas “came out screaming,” says Julie.

That scream became a rallying cry for fetal-rights groups, which seized on a stunning photograph of Samuel’s tiny hand emerging from his mother’s uterus during surgery. Since then, anti-abortion activists have posted the image on dozens of Web sites to show just how real human fetuses are—even those that aren’t yet viable. And that’s just fine with the Armases. “We’re very glad it’s gotten visibility,” says Alex. “That wasn’t our fetus, that was Samuel.”

"We found the weapons of mass destruction," Bush asserted in the Thursday interview, released Friday. "We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."

Bush's assertion, one of many recent administration statements shifting focus from Iraq's weapons to Iraq's weapons programs, indicated the president would consider its accusations justified by the discovery of equipment that potentially could be used to produce weapons. But the original charges against Iraq, presented to the United Nations and the American public, were explicitly about the weapons themselves.

According to the report, senior production officials at the research facility at Al Kindi said the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for use in artillery weather balloons. While acknowledging that the plants could be used for that purpose, intelligence officials said it was illogical and unlikely.

''The Iraqis had a motivation for inefficiently producing biological agent,'' one official said. ''They had no motivation for inefficiently producing anything else. If they wanted to produce hydrogen, they should have produced it efficiently.'' The official added that the facility was probably developed more for secrecy than for efficiency of chemical production.

During the 1990s, the United States and Russia -- a far poorer country emerging from totalitarian rule and beset by official corruption and organized crime -- vied for the dubious position of the highest incarceration rate on the planet.

But in the last few years, Russian authorities have carried out large-scale amnesties to ease overcrowding in disease-infested prisons, and the United States has emerged unchallenged into first place, at 702 prisoners per 100,000 population. Russia now has 665 prisoners per 100,000.

United States imprisons at a far greater rate than developed Western nations and many impoverished and authoritarian countries. On a per capita basis, according to the best available figures, the United States has three times more prisoners than Iran, four times more than Poland, five times more than Tanzania and seven times more than Germany.

A major cause is the war on drugs. In 1980, says Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project in Washington, about 40,000 Americans were locked up for drugs-only offenses. Now the number is 450,000, three-fourths of them black or Latino, though drug use is no higher in those groups than among whites.